Virginia Tech entered this season short-handed, as Seth Greenberg’s untimely firing coupled with Motrezl Harrell and Dorian Finney-Smith leaving before giving new head coach James Johnson a chance severely limited the Hokie rotation.

“I feel extremely bad for Marshall,” Johnson said. “This young man has been playing well. He was really starting to come into his own and playing with confidence. He has been helping the team in a lot of ways. This is a setback to Marshall and setback to our team.”

This is a bigger problem for the Hokies than it would be for another program due to the uptempo system that Johnson wants to play. After a 7-0 start, Virginia Tech has lost two of their last three games, at West Virginia and, on Saturday, at home to Georgia Southern. Does that have anything to do with the lack of depth on the roster? Who knows, but we’ll find out in the coming weeks just how capable Virginia Tech is of handling those depth issues. They play at BYU on December 29th and start ACC play the following week.